NOTE: Remember when they told us GM crops would reduce herbicide use,
particularly of the harsh old-line agrochemicals?
EXTRACTS: [B]ig
chemical companies - taking a page from Monsanto's book - are engineering crop
varieties that will enable farmers to spray on the tough old weedkillers freely,
instead of having to apply them surgically in order to spare crops.
"The
herbicide business used to be good before Roundup nearly wiped it out," says Dan
Dyer, head of soybean research and development at Syngenta. "Now it is getting
fun again."
---
---
Superweed Outbreak Triggers Arms Race
SCOTT
KILMAN
Wall Street Journal, 4 June
2010
http://biolargo.blogspot.com/2010/06/round-up-weed-killer-and-acquired.html
Hardy
superweeds immune to the Farm Belt's most effective weedkiller are invading
fields, prompting a counterattack from agribusiness that could leave farmers
using greater amounts of harsh old-line herbicides.
The flagging
weedkiller is Roundup. Its developer, Monsanto Co., also sells seeds for corn,
soybean and cotton plants unaffected by the chemical, enabling farmers to spray
it on freely without fear of harming their crops. Farmers now do so en masse,
using "Roundup Ready" crop varieties for 90% of the soybeans and 80% of the corn
grown across the U.S.
The rise of Roundup, more than a decade ago, sent
older herbicides that damage both weeds and crops into deep eclipse. But now, as
nasty invaders with names like pigweed, horseweed and Johnsongrass develop
immunity to the mighty Roundup, chemical companies are dusting off the potent
herbicides of old for an attack on the new superweeds.
And big chemical
companies—taking a page from Monsanto's book—are engineering crop varieties that
will enable farmers to spray on the tough old weedkillers freely, instead of
having to apply them surgically in order to spare crops.
Dow Chemical
Co., DuPont Co., Bayer AG, BASF SE and Syngenta AG are together spending
hundreds of millions of dollars to develop genetically modified soybean, corn
and cotton seeds that can survive a dousing by their herbicides, many decades
old.
"It will be a very significant opportunity" for chemical companies,
says John Jachetta, a scientist at Dow Chemical's Dow AgroSciences and president
of the Weed Science Society of America. "It is a new era."
The
bioengineering push is causing controversy, though. Some of the old
pesticides—in particular, those called 2,4-D and dicamba—have a history of
posing more risks for the environment than the chemical in Roundup. That's
partly because they have more of a tendency to drift on the wind onto
neighboring farms or wild vegetation. Roundup tends to adhere better to the
ground.
The chemical companies are betting their biotech investments will
pay off in two ways: Farmers will buy more of their herbicides, and will pay big
premiums for the new seeds.
Some 40% of U.S. land planted to corn and
soybeans is likely to harbor at least some Roundup-resistant superweeds by the
middle of this decade, executives at DuPont estimate. That could create big
demand for the herbicides that can kill the evolved weeds—and for the seeds of
crops that permit free use of those herbicides.
The new
herbicide-tolerant seeds "would make controlling weeds very easy for farmers,"
says David Mortensen, a weed scientist at Pennsylvania State University. As a
result, he says, the amount of herbicide sprayed on just one major crop,
soybeans, could climb roughly 70%.
The burst of efforts by rivals isn't
necessarily bad for Monsanto's crop-biotech business, at least in the short
term. The chemical in Roundup remains able to kill hundreds of kinds of weeds
and will remain a central part of the farmer's arsenal. Most companies
developing crops tolerant of other herbicides want to build them on a Roundup
Ready platform, so to speak—putting their new herbicide-tolerant genes into
crops that already carry tolerance for Roundup.
Yet the developments
portend further turmoil in the $12 billion U.S. pesticide industry. Monsanto
already is cutting prices for Roundup to compete with a flood of cheap
Chinese-made generics. The patent for Roundup expired years ago. The St. Louis
company has cut its earnings outlook recently to reflect both generic
competition and a backlash by farmers against the steep prices it charges for
genetically modified seeds. Its stock has dropped 39% this year.
Monsanto
also is facing the 2014 expiration of the patent on the key gene in seeds for
soybeans tolerant of the weedkiller.
It was back in the 1990s that
Monsanto upended the herbicide industry and farming practices by offering its
first genetically modified product—soybean seeds into which scientists had
transplanted genetic material from microorganisms and petunias. The seeds
sprouted soybean plants that could survive exposure to Roundup. Chemically known
as glyphosate, Roundup was known for its ability to kill almost anything green
yet leave a relatively small environmental footprint, being less toxic to
wildlife and people than most weedkillers. "If glyphosate isn't the safest
herbicide, it is damn close," says Charles Benbrook, chief scientist of the
Organic Center, a nonprofit organic advocacy group.
The new seeds meant
farmers could leave behind the risk and guesswork of choosing the right
herbicides to spray, at exactly the right time, on the right weeds. Weed control
became so easy that many farmers sold off their weed-tilling implements and
stopped buying other pesticides.
The chemical weed control even had some
environmental pluses because it left the soil undisturbed, reducing erosion.
Farmers burned less fuel, no longer needing to crisscross fields with implements
that root out weeds. The Roundup revolution, as some called it, freed up time
for growers to plant more land, helping spur bigger farms.
Monsanto's
sales and profits soared while other herbicide makers suffered. DuPont's leading
herbicide for soybean farmers, called Classic, lost about 90% of its business.
Some industry players were swept into mergers, and research spending wilted.
Today, Roundup and its generic competitors are used on nearly four times as many
U.S. acres as any other herbicide.
But weeds are adapting. At least
nine species have developed immunity to it. They've spread to millions of acres
in more than 20 states in the Midwest and South.
Ron Holthouse, a farmer
who grows cotton and soybeans on 8,600 acres near Osceola, Ark., says he spends
hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on the herbicide. But after 10 years
of use on his land, Roundup no longer controls pigweed, which ran rampant in his
fields last year.
The weed, which can grow six feet high on a stalk like
a baseball bat, is tough enough to damage delicate parts of his cotton-picking
equipment. Mr. Holthouse had to hire a crew of 20 laborers to attack the weeds
with hoes, resorting to a practice from his father's generation. For the first
time in years, Mr. Holthouse used some of an older, highly poisonous weedkiller
called paraquat.
Many Southern farmers are spending twice as much on
killing weeds as it typically cost them just a few years ago. "It is getting a
lot harder and expensive to run a big farm," says Mr. Holthouse. "This is
nerve-racking."
Farmers have no wish to return to labor-intensive
methods. The success of expensive seeds that are Roundup-tolerant shows growers
will pay a steep premium to control weeds chemically.
Chemical companies
are tight-lipped about their development of crops that can tolerate the spraying
of herbicides other than Roundup. BASF and Bayer filed petitions last year with
biotech regulators at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, seeking permission to
market new herbicide-tolerant seeds. The USDA hasn't yet released its
environmental assessments. Several of the genetically modified plants are still
in field trials or in the laboratory.
Dow AgroSciences manufactures
2,4-D, a powerful herbicide introduced nearly 65 years ago. The company hopes by
2013 to be selling seeds for corn crops that will be unaffected if farmers
splash 2,4-D on their fields. The company hopes to have seeds for soybeans
tolerant of the herbicide a year later, and is also working on a
herbicide-tolerant cotton variety.
It won't predict how the new seeds
might help its sales of 2,4-D, but it's optimistic enough that it's developing a
new form of the herbicide.
Some winery owners are concerned that such
efforts will renew farmer demand for 2,4-D, to which grapes are highly sensitive
if the herbicide drifts from a farm sprayer onto vines. "I couldn't survive in
this business if 2,4-D resistant seed catches on in cotton country," says Neal
Newsom, whose 100-acre vineyard in Plains, Texas, is surrounded by cotton
fields. "A neighbor could take me out in one night."
The Natural
Resources Defense Council petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency in 2008
to ban 2,4-D, citing research that suggests it disrupts hormones in trout,
rodents and sheep. Dow says it is providing rebuttal data to the agency. A
spokesman for the EPA said it anticipates responding to the petition this
fall.
Both 2,4-D and dicamba, another older herbicide, are common
ingredients in weedkillers at lawn-and-garden stores, which homeowners are
careful to keep away from flowers and vegetables. Chemical companies say both
are safe in larger amounts if farmers follow usage instructions cleared years
ago by the EPA.
Allthough dicamba could kill superweeds such as Mr.
Holthouse's pigweed, soybean farmers haven't sprayed it because it kills
soybeans, too. A dicamba-tolerant soybean variety would change that. Monsanto
itself is developing one.
Bayer is developing soybeans that can survive
exposure to a herbicide that disables weeds' defense to ultraviolet rays,
setting them up for a fatal sunburn. Bayer hopes to have those soybean seeds on
the market in 2015 and later give corn and cotton plants immunity to the same
herbicide, called isoxaflutole.
As for Monsanto, its chairman and chief
executive, Hugh Grant, hinted in a call with analysts last week that the company
is considering whether to begin selling farmers cheap, off-patent weedkillers
that can kill Roundup-tolerant weeds. On Thursday a Monsanto spokeswoman, Kelli
Powers, said, "We remain committed to working with farmers to manage weed
resistance," adding, "We have a shared interest with farmers in continuing to
deliver environmental and production benefits on the farm with
glyphosate."
Monsanto, in fact, is launching a second generation of
Roundup Ready seeds. Competitors continue to try to develop their own plant
varieties tolerant of the chemical in Roundup. DuPont's big Pioneer Hi-Bred seed
business, for example, plans to begin selling seed for soybean and corn plants
that can tolerate exposure to both the Roundup chemical and other
herbicides.
Swiss-based Syngenta, meanwhile, is field-testing soybeans
genetically engineered to tolerate exposure to a relatively new herbicide
Syngenta makes called Callisto.
"The herbicide business used to be good
before Roundup nearly wiped it out," says Dan Dyer, head of soybean research and
development at Syngenta. "Now it is getting fun again."
Write to Scott
Kilman at
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